Mike Penning: C.difficile - Government "took its eye off the ball"

Mike Penning has condemned the Government for being too dependent on targets in trying to combat hospital-acquired infections.

Hemel MP, Mike Penning, made a major speech in the House of Commons on Tuesday (23rd January) calling for a return to high standards of cleanliness in our hospitals and for nurses to have responsibility for the cleanliness of their wards.

The pressure on beds in the NHS means that in many cases a bed is reoccupied within minutes of the previous patient moving out. There is little, if any, time for the bed and the area surrounding it to be effectively sterilised.

Mike told MPs about a recent visit to Hemel hospital:

”I saw a ward full to bursting and a mixed-sex ward. That, in the 21st century, is degrading, and the Government promised that it would not happen. No more than 20 ft from the ward that I visited was another ward that was empty not because it was infected, but because there is no money to staff and run it.”

Comparing the situation to his visit last year to the field ambulance unit in al-Amara in Iraq, Mike said:

“…in the three years that that field ambulance unit has been in place, there has been not a single case of MRSA among our armed forces there, nor among those of the local population who were treated there when they needed acute care. Why is that? Part of the explanation is clearly that the bed occupancy rate is very low. Patients are not being rushed into a bed within minutes—sometimes, it literally is minutes—of its being vacated. Also, cleanliness is the responsibility of the ward sister and of the nurses in that field hospital.”

Mike called for a return to the high standards found in our hospitals in years gone by, where the ward sister ran the ward and had complete control over the cleaning staff – and everyone visiting the ward. Mike referred to a time many years ago when he worked as a volunteer at Rochford hospital:

“In my experience of sisters running wards, if a consultant turned up with a dirty coat, for example, they would grab him by the ear and sort him in out in 20 seconds flat.”

Mike also called on the Government to produce any evidence they have suggesting a link between contracting out of cleaning services and the massive increase in healthcare acquired infections.

“If there is a link, I’ll be the first to support the bringing back of in-house cleaning” he said, “but evidence that I have seen seems to imply that it makes no difference – of the 10 hospitals with the highest infection level, half have in-house cleaning and half have cleaning contracted out.”

Mike criticised the Government’s target-led campaign against MRSA:

“Given the information in the Government’s leaked documents, there is no doubt that through targeting just MRSA, efforts to deal with other dangerous and critical infections have unintentionally fallen by the wayside. I do not think that the Department said, “We’ll let C. difficile explode out of all proportion,”, but it took its eye off the ball by going down the avenue of targets. As the experience of my local hospital structure shows, if one thing is targeted, something else gets forgotten because the system simply does not have the capacity to cope” he said.